It looked rather like a hospital room. There was a bed in the centre with a rack of machines beside it to monitor vital signs. Steel cabinets along the walls contained an enormous variety of chemicals to be injected and implements with which to inflict pain in precise, measured quantities. They had stripped him naked the moment he arrived and strapped him to that bed. Then they had shaved him. Not just his head and beard, but also his pubic hair, the hair around his anus, the hair on his chest, his arms, his legs. He was bald and humiliated by the time they threw him in the cell. Now the hair had started to grow back, sharp and stubbly. If they needed a patch of truly bald skin for one of their tortures, it was their habit to rip the stubble away using a wax patch – the sort of thing Western whores used upon their intimate areas.
And the tortures. Such tortures.
He had thought he would think of Allah and withstand them. And at first he had. He had always known there was a possibility of such a fate awaiting him, and he was prepared for it, or so he believed. But these Americans had a gift for cruelty he could never have imagined. Now his body had been cut and punctured in a hundred places; they had injected him with compounds that set his veins on fire, and others that turned them to ice. They had driven needles into the roof of his mouth and through the centre of his joints, and cracked his bones with clinical precision. They had used electricity. They had beaten and crushed his genitals.
They had kept him awake with loud music. They had locked him in his cell for twenty hours between tortures, and then only for twenty minutes, so he never knew when it was going to come. They had shown him pictures: mutilated corpses, Western pornography, blasphemous images of the Prophet.
They had starved him, then laughingly offered him only pork to eat. They had offered him cool water when he was thirsty, only to snatch it away when it was near his lips. They had thrown him into that unclean corner of the cell where he was forced to relieve himself so that for days now his skin had been covered in stinking dried excrement and his captors were forced to approach him wearing latex gloves and surgical masks.
But worse than all this, they had kept him alive: daily antibiotic injections, a saline drip that hydrated him but did not relieve his constant thirst. The same doctor was always on hand, there to ensure that he always remained the right side of consciousness. The right side of the death he would have welcomed.
To start with, they did not even ask him any questions. He understood why. They wanted to break him first. When, eventually, they did – two days in, perhaps, maybe three – they seemed only to focus on questions to which they knew the answer. If he responded correctly, he was given a sip of water. If incorrectly, a swift, brutal punishment. He became grateful for the former and fearful of the latter.
They tried to confuse him with their questioning, pretending he had given answers he had not given. They had burst into his cell when he was on the verge of sleep, screaming questions at him, demanding answers. They had injected him with substances that made him drowsy and confused, eager to be compliant, reluctant to fight. It was during one of these periods that a new face had appeared: the well-fed, fattened face of a man in horn-rimmed glasses and wearing a neat little bow tie. He had stood over the bed, looking down with interest as the room swam, but he had not appeared again.
He had been wrong to think he could withstand it. They had broken him completely. He had told them everything. He had given them names; described places. He could not think how they knew about the plane attacks, but he told them about those, too. His final act ruined. Anything to stop the torment.
Anything for the death these Americans were denying him. Their final act of revenge for the glorious eleventh.
The door to his cell opened. A figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light behind him. The sound of the door opening always made him jump. He jumped now, then trembled even more violently as the figure stood there in silence. What fresh hell did they have for him now? They had bled him dry. He had no more to give them.
The figure spoke. ‘Time for your burial at sea, you piece of shit,’ he said.
Burial at sea? His English was not good, but even when he had worked out what the silhouette had said, he didn’t understand it. Burial at sea?
But then his eyes widened. There was movement in the doorway. A flash of red caught his eye and he saw it was coming from something the silhouette was holding. He looked down at his naked, bony chest. A tiny red dot of light flickered over his heart.
He could not smile, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t glad.
The three bullets, fired in quick, ruthless succession, did not kill him instantly. There was a brief moment, as he fell to his side and blood spewed from his ulcerated mouth, for him to rejoice.
He was to be welcomed into Paradise.
His struggle was complete.
Joe had crossed four borders in seventy-two hours. A cross-Channel ferry train to Marseilles and from there to Alicante. Another boat to Oran, Algeria. Only when he was in Africa, where technology was less advanced and a few banknotes could buy him his way out of any difficulty, did he feel in any way confident showing his passport at an airport. Even so, boarding a flight to Asmara International Airport in Eritrea had been tense.
Not as tense, though, as landing. If their presence had been logged, they could expect a welcoming party the moment they touched down. Joe knew this, which was why, as they flew over the parched continent, he had said everything to Conor that he wanted to say. That he was proud of him. That he was sorry. That from this moment on there wouldn’t be a single day that he wasn’t there for him. He hadn’t told him all there was to tell – that could wait until he was old enough and well enough to understand. In any case, all that was over. At least it would be soon.
Conor hadn’t responded. Not in words. He hadn’t spoken since the fire. He had stared out of the aircraft window, as totally silent as he’d been since the fire. But Joe knew, by the squeeze of his son’s hand, that he understood. That it was OK between them. Or as OK as it could ever be without Caitlin.
Conor was clutching his hand again now, nervously, as they queued in the bleak, sweaty terminal, the only white faces here, both of them bruised and scarred. The instant he’d walked into the building, Joe had checked for security cameras. There were none that he could see, but he kept his head bowed anyway, and pulled his son’s baseball cap a little further over his eyes. They walked towards the immigration queue, ignoring the armed guards.
The queue was short, but slow. A single booth, with a dark-eyed official scrutinizing every passport thoroughly. There were only ten passengers ahead of them, but it was still fifteen minutes before he and Conor approached the booth. He handed their passports over silently, squeezing Conor’s hand a little harder as he did so.
The immigration official started on the boy’s passport, examining every page, looking back and forth from the document to its owner. Joe looked straight ahead, past the two guards standing five metres beyond him, AK-47s strapped to their bodies, towards the shop fifteen metres beyond them advertising duty-free goods and ‘Gift Articles’.
The official spoke. ‘Mr Conor?’ he asked, in a dead, unenthusiastic voice. He looked at Conor, one eyebrow raised. Conor looked back.